


Ghosts

by Huehxolotl



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Gen, Grief, He's basically the third main character, Hext family background, Mentions of Curtis Hext, Post-Stormblood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-19
Updated: 2020-07-19
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:34:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,625
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25373959
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Huehxolotl/pseuds/Huehxolotl
Summary: Raganfrid looks at Lyse Hext and sees only the ghost of the man who was once his best friend and brother in all but blood.Lyse looks at Raganfrid and sees only a man she should have known from a life she should have lived.As Gyr Abania begins the long process of recovery, they find themselves forced to face not only each other, but also the shadows of Curtis Hext, Kysa Hext, and the life that Garlemald robbed them of.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 9





	Ghosts

**Author's Note:**

> I will forever be annoyed at the lack of Hext family information. This is my way of fixing that. And who doesn't love some good old Lyse angst?
> 
> (It's been a while since I've written anything, so I dusted off this old wip to help me get back into the groove. Please forgive any errors or bad grammar.)

Raganfrid is an old man.

This is something he has had many years to come to terms with, and something he has started to constantly remind his fellow villagers of now that he’s their “representative.” Not that there are many left; not after twenty years of subjugation, after Baelsar’s Wall, after the slaughter at the Reach.

He has seen successful revolutions and failed revolutions, has seen his friends and family waste away or be brutally slaughtered. He has spent years honing his craft during a time of prosperity for his village, and nearly as many struggling to keep his people alive under Garlean rule.

He has seen all the best and worst that life has to offer, and the weight of it all presses down on him whenever his mind wanders into the depths of his memories. It was easy at first, to be angry, to fight, to swear that nothing but death would stop him, but as the years dragged on, he spent more and more time dwelling on all that he had lost. Difficult not to, when there seemed to be no salvation in sight for Rhalgr’s children. Bitterness tainted his soul; he hated those who continued the hopeless fight against Garlemald, and hated that there was a part of him that still wanted to do so himself.

Even now, with Ala Mhigo free and hope swelling in the hearts of his countrymen, he finds it difficult to fully let go of that bitterness. Especially when the damned Council meetings drag on for far longer than entirely necessary, leaving him with nothing to do but dwell on anything and everything -including the pitiful state of his village- as he waits to be released.

“Are you alright, Raganfrid? **You look grumpier than usual**.”

His hand twitches, reflexively starting to form a fist before he remembers that he is an old man, and that it isn’t _Curtis_ bothering him, but rather his wayward daughter; however annoying a Hext might naturally be, punching young women is certainly not something he wants to be known for. Sighing, he settles for giving _Lyse_ Hext a half-hearted glare. “I’m too old to be forced to sit here and listen to Svana posture for Hanne.”

The young woman in question shouts her objections, but from the way most of the other Council members pointedly look away from her, it’s clear that few disagree with the observation.

Lyse laughs nervously, shrugs, and ignores the now bickering Svana and Hanne in favor of granting him a bright smile that decades of experience has taught him means he is either about to have his patience tested or his mood brightened; there is no in-between with a Hext. “Are you hungry? I have some snacks!”

“I’m not.”

 **“** Come on, **food makes everything better!** And we deserve a treat after all the work we did today, **wouldn’t you say**?”

Again, he sighs, offering no further argument as Lyse begins piling an alarming amount of snacks onto the table from a bag he had previously assumed contained paperwork. Which, he admits to himself, is only a reasonable assumption if the person in question is anyone other than a Hext. A significant portion of the snacks look like they each contain more sugar than he has seen in the last two decades, and an even more significant portion are yellow enough to suggest they’re some sort of lemon flavor.

“I see there’s some Kysa in you after all,” he says, sneering specifically at the cookies with lemon based frosting. He isn’t _at all_ still bitter about the time Kysa -then a monk-in-training and always eager to put her skills to use- kicked him in the stomach in retaliation for eating her Limsa-imported lemon cookies, or that Curtis had laughed himself sick at his misfortune.

He had gotten his revenge on them both, after all. (No matter that Curtis had repeatedly warned him of what would happen if he ate them.)

His memories distract him, but not enough for him to miss the way Lyse Hext pauses, her smile fading and body drooping slightly. A breath, two, of silence, then, softly, _weakly_ , “My...mom?”

For the first time since he met her, he looks at Lyse Hext and doesn’t see Curtis in her eyes, or hear him in her words. For the first time, he looks at Lyse Hext and sees a young woman who has buried her emotional wounds so deeply that not even _she_ had realized they were still there. For the first time, he looks at Lyse Hext and sees not a brat from another land, but a refugee who has lost everything of her family and her history except a desire for freedom and a fierce instinct to protect.

( _Lyse looks at him with fear and hope and a grief she’d thought long buried threatening to drown her because_ gods _when was the last time she had heard her mother’s name uttered aloud and Raganfrid_ knew _her and knew her father and suddenly all the questions she had once learned to stop asking Yda are fighting to be voiced all at once and-_ )

“Oi, is that _chocolate_?”

The moment is broken, an unbearably wounded expression flashing across Lyse’s face before it’s wiped away by a wide grin that is only slightly smaller than usual. The woman chirps a confirmation that she has _several_ chocolate treats in her pile, and the Council abandons their arguments in favor of salivating over the rare sweets that the young commander has gifted them with. Aldynn mutters something about the lass learning the value of bribery as he swipes a few of the berry filled pastries for himself, and the next several minutes are filled with the “esteemed” council members arguing over food like children.

He can’t bring himself to join the arguments, still shaken by the sudden realization that Lyse is, perhaps, more than simply Curtis number two; that she is a broken young thing who has nowhere left to go but forward.

( **“If I look away for half a second, she tries to escape out of the house.” Curtis grins proudly in spite of his exhaustion and the squirming, giggling baby with eyes bluer than the spring waters held in his arms. “Rhalgr help anyone who stands in her way, when she’s grown.”** )

“So you were hungry after all!”

Startled, he looks down at the slice of cream-swirled bread that is in his hand. There’s only a bite left of what was once a considerably sized slice, and, to his consternation, he _does_ feel better. His hand twitches again when Lyse promises to bring him more bread next time and interrogates him about his favorite flavors and actually she can absolutely deliver some to Ala Gannha before in a few days and of course she’ll get some of the cookies he had nearly chosen instead of the bread.

“Don’t put yourself through the trouble,” he grunts, fighting the urge to grab a muffin because dammit he _hates_ proving a Hext right.

Lyse ( **Curtis** ) crosses her ( **his** ) arms and fixes him with a determined look. “ **It’s the least I can do**.”

He doesn’t have the energy to argue -or the chance, with Aldynn calling the meeting back to order- but he wonders what he’s done that makes Lyse think she needs to repay him. There’s nothing he can think of, but that was usually the case with her mother too. Thankfully, she all but runs out of the throne room immediately after the meeting ends, rambling about the work she has to do and hopefully forgetting her plans to deliver a month’s supply of sweets to Ala Gannha.

( **“A Hext never forgets their promises.” Curtis smacks him on the back, throws down the armor he wanted engraved weeks ago, and grips his shoulder painfully. “Or the promises of _others_. Don’t think you can avoid me this time.”**)

...Right. He’ll count himself lucky if the girl brings _only_ what she said she would.

Raubahn Aldynn, a hero in his own right, laughs to himself as he watches the bickering council follow Lyse out at a reasonable speed. “If I had even a fraction of her energy, I would feel ten years younger.”

It’s impossible not to scoff at the idea of Aldynn being old, as his words suggest. That man doesn’t know the _meaning_ of old. “Curtis used to swear that his youngest would become a force of nature someday. Insufferable bastard was right, like always.”

When Aldynn gives him a startled, almost offended look, he remembers that Curtis is technically a “hero” to his countrymen. Not to say his old friend wasn’t a hero in many respects, but if people expect him to speak of Curtis with reverence, they’re going to be _sorely_ disappointed.

A week passes. A week of his memories projecting Curtis, Kysa, and other long dead friends in every corner of Ala Gannha. A week of scribbling down newly recalled memories for no reason other than that he _feels_ like it. A week of denying that he is waiting for a blue-eyed terror to visit with her promised food and a broken heart searching for a connection to the village that should have been her home.

One of the younger villagers has the gall to note that he seems more energetic lately.

He sticks the little shite on guard duty for the rest of the month.

When he returns to Ala Mhigo for the next meeting, he has pages of hastily written memories hidden underneath his actual paperwork and a scolding ready to be unleashed upon the girl who hadn’t shown up as promised. As is typical for a Hext, however, she ruins his plans by _not being there_.

He is not alone in eyeing her empty chair, but Aldynn gives them no explanation, and the others are too star-struck to immediately question his obvious acceptance of the absence. The meeting is quieter, more solemn than usual; the way these sorts of things ought to be, really, but Lyse is every bit her father’s daughter in the way she brightens a room and eases the soul with her presence. She has his emotional perception too, though she is more like Kysa in how she will casually blurt out some of her more unflattering observations.

While the girl is usually right on the nose with her comments, building their home will take the work of many people, and it helps no one if a potential ally is offended by blunt criticisms.

They’re holding themselves together with little more than the high of victory and the ever-present threat of Garlean retaliation. Even then, getting the majority of the council to agree on any given topic takes an entire day of arguing back and forth.

Whether or not it will last, now that is the real question. But, well, these days rebuilding seems less like a far-off dream and more a far-off reality. If they can keep their freedom, keep rebuilding, keep working together to make Gyr Abania a home for all who need one, for a few years, then he has no doubt that all else will come in time.

Rhalgr’s children are the most stubborn bastards to ever walk the land, after all. Once they choose their direction, only hell itself will deter them from their path.

( **Curtis snorts and takes a long drink of his ale. He has never seen his friend so exhausted, but who can blame him? His wife is long gone, he has turned himself into the symbol of the resistance, his oldest daughter fights beside him, and his youngest is basically alone with how little time they spend at home. “I’m not special, Raganfrid. I’m only telling them what they already know they want. Sometimes, people just need to know that they aren’t the _only_ ones who want freedom.”**)

“It was merely a minor emergency.”

He blinks, and Curtis fades away from his daughter’s empty chair. He hadn’t realized that he had been staring. Again.

Aldynn is watching him without expression. He isn’t sure what he’s done to deserve such caution, though the man _does_ tend toward stoicism during their meetings, so perhaps it has nothing to do with him personally.

“Minor for her soldiers, or minor for a Hext?” he drawls, showing no sign of discomfort under that intense gaze. Aldynn is intimidating, sure, but he’s dealt with far worse than a suspicious soldier.

It’s a valid question, anyway; even if he is the only one in the room who understands the distinction. Kysa had a habit of collapsing temple pillars, and Curtis a habit of picking fights with beasts twice his size. He has exactly zero faith that their daughter isn’t just as destructive, and just as blithe about it.

“...The M tribe requested assistance with hunting a beast near the edge of their territory. It mauled the last two groups that managed to corner it,” Aldynn shares reluctantly.

He doesn’t understand the man’s hesitance to speak of Lyse, and isn’t sure he trusts the way Aldynn watches him. It’s clear that there is a lack of trust between Aldynn and himself, yet he can’t say _why_ that lack exists. Whatever the man’s problem, he’s not in the mood to confront him. They’re both professionals -in a manner of speaking- and he hadn’t expected to make friends with all of the council when he was asked to join.

If Aldynn has a problem, he can deal with it himself.

**(“Can’t you _try_ and be a little more sociable? Just because you’re surrounded by rocks for most of the day doesn’t mean you have to imitate one during the rest of it,” Curtis laughs. The smirk on his face is nothing but condescending, and the urge to punch him is held back by what little of his sobriety is left. “You do realize that you need to actually _talk_ to a woman if you want to take one home for the night? Unless you prefer men, in which case, we ought to switch tact-”**

**No amount of sobriety could have stopped him from swinging his fist at that moment.**

**He only wishes that he hadn’t had so much to drink that he missed his best friend’s nose by a yalm.)**

The hunt that kept Lyse from the last meeting had resulted in a small rockslide and half an abandoned village being set on fire.

He isn’t surprised -well, maybe a little but only because the fire _hadn’t_ been Lyse’s fault- but he can see several alarmed looks from the people eavesdropping on his conversation with the young commander.

“-not sure whose idea it even was to _bring_ that many explosives. I think one of the hunters from the Stones, but they’re usually way more careful than-”

Why are so many people milling around his table anyhow? Just because there’s little work for the quarry doesn’t mean they can spend their time sniffing for gossip like starved dogs.

“Tahla told me what happened at the village, and we decided it was better off destroyed, so-”

Sighing heavily and paying only half a mind to the rambling, he picks up the bag and torches that have been prepared for over a week now and interrupts the flood of words with a terse command to follow him. The eavesdroppers slink off in disappointment -none would dare try and _follow_ him, no matter how much they want to gossip- while Lyse hums in interest. Thankfully that’s _all_ she does, choosing to follow him in blessed, blessed silence.

( _There’s no time for words when she is too busy examining the village and desperately wishing that something,_ anything _sparks a memory. This is her_ history _, this is where she should have spent her life, but no matter how hard she looks, she can’t imagine the hazy figure of her father wandering these paths, can’t imagine Yda training and learning and living the carefree childhood that she herself had been denied. With every step, with every blank stare that meets her own, she slowly accepts that Ala Gannha will never be a home to her._

 _Part of her wonders if she will_ ever _have a true home._ )

He leads her into the mountain itself. Ala Gannha is made up of more than the aetheryte plaza and a row of houses on the side of the mountain. The quarry had drawn merchants from all over Eorzea, and pilgrims had often stopped in Ala Gannha on their journey. They hadn’t been a trading hub by any means, but the village had been lively once upon a time. So much so that the decision to expand their village by tunnelling into the mountain had only been natural.

Most of these rooms have sat empty for nigh on two decades, used only to entertain the children who dare each other to brave the “haunted” tunnels. The air is stale, the scent of old dust and rotting wood lingering in the air. Little of their belongings survived the Imperial raids, and most of what did had to be sold off in order to pay the ever increasing taxes the bastards forced them to pay. The flickering light of the torch meets jagged edges of the wall, producing dozens of small, shifting shadows. It’s not enough to give the tunnel a sense of life, but it’s enough to make him remember when these paths were always lit.

He looks left, and sees Kysa laughing wildly as she dumps a bucket of water on a group of passed out and hungover monks. He looks right, and he sees his father slamming his hand on a table as he yells for more food. He looks down a side tunnel, and sees a teenage Curtis and himself snickering as they run past, stolen bottles of alcohol in their hands. He breathes in, and he smells bread, mead, and steak in the air. He breathes out, and he is signing for the thousandth time because Curtis just _won’t shut up_ about this punch-happy monk he can’t get the courage to ask out.

But for all that his ghosts walk with him, he is not twenty years old, covered in dirt after a hard day of work, laughing -or arguing- with an equally dirty Curtis, weaving his way through crowds of merchants, monks, and miners; he is sixty-two, bones creaking and feet shuffling as Lyse silently shadows his steps, nothing in their path but dust and the occasional bat.

At the very back of the tunnels, past a dust-caked wooden door and a small, winding path, is an underground cavern. Half a malm from the longest end to the other, a deep pond fed by a thin waterfall dominates most of the space. Ancient runes and carvings decorate the walls, and specks of glowing aether float above the water, providing just enough light to see. Even when the village was full and the trade good, this cavern was rarely visited.

Lyse inhales sharply when she steps out of the tunnel, and he braces himself for whatever excited ramble she is about to unleash. To his surprise, when she speaks, it is slowly and reverently. “There’s so much emotion here. It’s as if-”

**(“-they’re still here with us. All these lights...they’re like the souls of the people. ” Kysa looks down at the carved stone in her hand and smiles mirthlessly. “The echoes of them, anyway. It’s nice, in a way, but I see why you people don’t speak of this place.”)**

He motions for the girl to follow him. With so many families being torn apart by forced servitude or forced conscription, the cavern saw fewer and fewer visits over the years, until the tradition was given up altogether.

“There used to be a tradition among those born in the village. When one of us passed, their family would carve a stone to represent their life and add it to the pond.”

“With a memorial boat and candles, like the Sharlayans do?”

“No, we just throw them in.”

“...Oh. That makes more sense. I mean, if ghosts needed light to see, they wouldn’t haunt people at nighttime.”

He almost asks the girl what the bloody hell she’s on about, but decides to ignore the comment in favor of watching his footing more carefully. The waterfall isn’t strong enough to throw out a mist that reaches this far away, but the well-worn path runs at a steep incline, and he isn’t as nimble as he used to be. Turning before he reaches the water’s edge, he heads toward the only trace of human intrusion; a bench crudely carved into the waist-high ridges that surround the pond.

Sitting is a relief. The walk, while not long, places an impossibly heavy burden on those who must make it.

Yet the short journey is the easiest part of this tradition.

By the time Lyse takes her seat next to him, he has already set the torch in the sconce next to the bench and dug through his bag for the most important item. He runs his thumb over the granite, remembering the nights he spent carving the detailed griffin and shield. Several versions had been tossed in those days, many of them the victims of his unchecked grief and rage. Curtis had been the closest thing he had to family after his father died, so he felt it was his duty to carve his memorial stone.

Yet never could he bring himself to let it go. Perhaps his friend’s spirit had known that Lyse would someday return to Ala Gannha. Or perhaps he was a sentimental old fool.

“Curtis was an idiot,” he says abruptly. Shoving the stone into Lyse’s hands, he shakes his head and adds, “Good with words and weapons, but an idiot nonetheless. Always dragged me into trouble, complaining about how boring I was. He could be a real pain in the arse when he wanted to be. Don’t let any of this “hero of the resistance” nonsense fool you.”

It’s easy to speak of Curtis and Kyse and Yda once he starts, memories he has bottled up for decades spilling out. He talks and talks and talks, says more words and sheds more tears in those hours than he has in the last decade. After the invasion, he had been too angry to grieve, and then he had been too _tired_ to grieve. None of the village elders speak of their past without hefty amounts of alcohol to goad them on, and the younger generations don’t care enough to listen even if they did.

Lyse takes in his stories with few questions. She is half-curled up on the bench, her arms around one knee, her face streaked with tears, and the memorial stone clutched tightly in her right hand. He wishes he had Curtis’ skill with words; no matter how many pages of memories he’d written in preparation for this, he still finds himself stumbling over words and getting sidetracked as he remembers new details.

The torch burns out long before his stories are done, but by then they have no need to light another. Glowing orbs bright from Lyse’s absent infusions of her own aether dance around them, attracted to the latent aether that all beings contain. There’s something haunting about the way orbs of light seemingly rising from the tip of her finger. Each light -each _soul_ \- floats away gently, sharing its gifted aether with the smaller lights it comes into contact with.

“You don’t need to let go right away,” he says when the silence becomes less peaceful and more suffocating. “Not everyone does.”

Lyse hums. There’s a bitter smile on her face; the same sort of smile Curtis wore when he left Ala Gannha for the last time, his two daughters in tow and an uncertain future awaiting him in the capitol. “I don’t think I’m the right person to _be_ letting him go. I never knew him. Not really. And. Well. Family is more than blood.”

Her words surprise him, but not nearly as much as her holding out the stone to him does.

**(Curtis slaps his head. “Family is decided by your heart, not your blood. I won’t let you say goodbye to the old man alone.”)**

**(Kysa punches his shoulder. “You’re basically my brother-in-law, and my dad liked you. Damn right you’re going with me into the creepy cave.”)**

He doesn’t want to take Curtis’s stone, doesn’t think he _deserves_ to take it, but Lyse, like her parents, is nothing if not stubborn. With a resigned sigh, he grabs the stone, taking a minute to run his fingers over the grooves and edges. The edges are worn smooth not by tools but by the hundreds of hours he has spent standing at the entrance to the cavern, stone in hand and courage gone.

But after twenty years, the time for grieving is long past, and, here and now, he finds it impossibly easy to let go of his pain and guilt.

Lyse sighs and bows her head after the splash echoes in the cavern, the aether orbs around them flickering in response to her emotions. "I'll never be able to make up all that the world lost with them," she murmurs solemnly, "but maybe, if I work hard enough, I'll be able to greet them proudly in the great beyond."

Those words hit him harder than one of Kysa's infamous uppercuts. He knows those words, has said them himself for the last two decades. At first, they had been a promise, then they became a mocking reminder of his failures. To hear them from the mouth of the youngest and last Hext is horrifying in a way he can barely comprehend.

Make them proud? Curtis had wanted his daughters to know happiness and peace, not war and blood. He had wanted them to gain strength from love, not from being forced to endure loss after loss.

And never, _never_ would Curtis have considered his daughter to be worth less than him.

“Fool child,” he says, voice hoarse and cracking after sharing over thirty years worth of memories. “The only thing he ever wanted for you was peace and happiness, not war.”

There is no change in Lyse’s posture. No amount of old stories can change the fact that she has spent her entire life chasing the shadows of her family, or that, to the Resistance, she is a Hext first and Lyse second.

**(“My girls deserve more than I can give them, Gan. I’ll try. Twelve save me, I’ll _try_ to raise them right, but how can I do it without her?”)**

“It’s a waste, trying to live your life in hopes of making him proud. That bastard swore that you could never make him prouder than when you threw up on my shirt.”

He can’t change her emotions where her family is concerned, not yet, but perhaps someday she will trust him enough to believe him when he says that Curtis only cared for their happiness. Until he has earned that trust, he decides he will do his best to support her like a _proper_ uncle. No matter how different their lives have been, their heartache for those lost and their hope for the future are the same, and really, that’s all that matters in the end.

And in his dreams that night, he is twenty years old, sharing a drink with Curtis and Kysa, and firmly declaring that their youngest is the only tolerable Hext that has ever existed. They laugh, and tell him that, if that’s the case, he has no excuse not to be a part of her life.

**“It’s time to stop running, Gan.”**

**“Shut up, you bastard. I don’t need you to tell me that.”**


End file.
